


Mysteries are Fire

by originally



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 06:10:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12550904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/originally/pseuds/originally
Summary: Frostfound hides many secrets.





	Mysteries are Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raininshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raininshadows/gifts).



You hide many secrets within your walls. Only some of them are your own.

Now and then, a zailor braves your halls with offerings to Salt and Stone and Storm, memories of a life of zailing. You embrace them, though they rarely live for long. There was one who did: a man who came to hide himself. You took him into your embrace too and his thoughts seeped into your ice like water into the ground, tasting of far-away lands, unknown tongues, the sun. Men and women, fire, revolution. You gloried in his memories until he sought to hide no more. You gave him to the zee; you hope he found his revolution.

Once, the one that came to hide was a ship. But it was more than a ship. You felt the pulsing heart of it echoing across the zee below. You drew it to you, the thing that dwelled within, deadly but beautiful. Eventually, it cooled and slowed and slept. When the girl came with picks and saws to take it away, your towers shivered with relief.

Others come, sometimes, always with something to hide: a crocodile-faced creature who carved a place in the ice for another mask, this one a bat; a green-haired woman who wove a song so sad and wondrous that your walls weeped to hear it; a zee-captain who left behind a locket of surpassing skill and craftsmanship, the face inside white and blank. Another came disguised, tiny wings beating and beating in the core of it. The brass box it left behind made a puddle in the antechamber and the sigil inside called to you for many weeks. One came robed and gowned, with a patch across one eye. Her knife flashed silver and her blood ran scarlet, freezing into the ice; a heavy price to pay to hide a secret. The young engineer ventured further than many, slipping through the corridors, offering such stories. His secret was viric-bright and glittering, plucked from the dream-realm beyond. His mind, too, was bright. You hope he will return.

There are those who camp upon your docks, just at the edge of consciousness, and ask their questions and play their contests. Perhaps one day their champion will brave the ice. You will be waiting.


End file.
